


Kingdom Come

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Fortnight 2014 [22]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Prompt Fic, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look into my eyes, Lan Fan,” he breathed, and she could feel his heat, pressed up against her body, his hands trembling on her shoulders. “It’s where my demons hide.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingdom Come

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FMA Week 2014. Prompt 13-B: "Song Lyrics". The song that appeared on my shuffle was Imagine Dragons's _Demons_. Both this and _Bleeding Out_ are absolutely perfect for the dynamic.
> 
> Takes place after Lan Fan returns from Xing with her brand-spankin' new automail.
> 
> Unbeta'd/unedited/etc. Enjoy!

“Look into my eyes, Lan Fan,” he breathed, and she could feel his heat, pressed up against her body, his hands trembling on her shoulders. “It’s where my demons hide.”

He curved over her, lifting himself up on his toes as if he had transformed into a wolf with the rise of the full moon, a disk of polished silver she could barely make out through the thick foliage of the trees that canopied overhead. The forest shaded them in its quiet darkness; she could hear his breaths rapid in his lungs, could feel his heartbeat thrumming against his sternum and by extension hers, could sense a strange hum beyond his heartbeat, like his entire body were vibrating, were _pulsating_ with a _chi_ beyond anything she had sensed before.

During her winter in Xing, she observed, he had somehow grown half a dozen centimetres. And the equivalent of several thousand souls.

“Young lord.” Not a demand, or an accusation, or a warning, because she had no right, _never_ had a right. “This is not safe, young lord. Your—” She inhaled: like animal, and like after the rain, and like smoke, strangely. None of the scents she associated with him, neither sweat nor food grease nor fresh grass, from where he had rolled and tumbled in his constant requests to spar or simply in his joy.

Something had changed.

“Your _chi_ is overpowering.” She clenched the fingers of her left hand into a fist of steel. “This one is blind.”

He growled. The noise rumbled from deep within his belly and shuddered up his throat to escape his bared teeth in a snarl. Teeth. Sharp, more akin to the fangs of a wild beast tearing into its prey than the soft smile he’d always worn when he thought she wasn’t looking.

He would not have filed them. The Emperor was to keep His body clean, untouched, virgin as the fallen snow until His coronation.

“Lan Fan.” Her name. A prayer on his lips, a plea, a whisper of desperation. His nails pressed into her skin through the thick fabric and padding of her armour; she heard the material rip. Then his stance shifted, perceptibly. He stood wrong, completely wrong, favouring his right instead of his left, his weight centred more towards the balls of his feet than the toes, his elbows bent at the wrong angle and his head tilted not as a bird would inquisitively cock its head but as a cat would observe a mouse trapped and screaming in a corner.

She _knew_ him, knew the signature of his _chi_ better than she knew her own: This was no Envy, cobbling together just enough to fool her. This _was_ him.

And yet.

“Young lord?”

He grunted, harshly, in a hard noise that she read as agony manifested. “Lan F _fff_ uck.” Grating out his words, he convulsed against her, snapping up his head with such quickness she halfway expected his neck to snap. His nails dug further into her. Her fullmetal shoulder groaned. Despite her reservations she caught his wrists and his hands twisted into claws, seemingly automatically.

The shadows appeared to cloak his skin, to meld into his flesh, and then she realised that his hands _had_ blackened. To grapheme.

Her brows snapped together. “Young lord, are you all ri—?”

WIth a gasp of agony so deep she felt the noise hollow out her bones, he seized up against her, smashed his forehead into the tree behind her, shivered, shook, _laughed_. Bracing her palms against his chest she pushed him back, _hard_. He stumbled. The shades slipped down the bridge of his nose. She swallowed her words, her eyes widening and her breath hitching painfully at the centre of her throat, to see the blazing intensity of his eyes.

Pupils. Twin slits, cat-like, set deep into maelstroms. Irises. Violet, _violent_ violet, veined with scarlet and luminous as jewels.

“Don’t get too close,” he whispered but not with _his_ voice, with a timbre born of pain and made of greed. “It’s dark inside. It’s where his demons hide.” His mouth curled upwards into a cruel horned moon, his sharpened teeth glittering in the dim light. “Hello, little vassal. Thought I would meet you one day.”


End file.
